A woman is dead after a vehicle went through a wooden fence and fell several hundred feet over the side of the Niagara Parkway Saturday.
Police and emergency services were called to the Niagara River Parkway just north of the Floral Clock in Niagara-on-the-Lake just before noon.
Niagara Parks Police, the NOTL and Niagara Falls fire services were on the scene and decided to deploy the Niagara Parks high angle river team to help in the search.
“Upon rappelling into the gorge, a heavily damaged vehicle was found near the bottom. A deceased person was located inside the vehicle,” Niagara Regional Police said in a news release.
The dead motorist was a woman in her forties from the Wasaga Beach area, Niagara Regional Police said Wednesday. No foul play or criminality is suspected.
The police refused to identify the victim, saying, “out of respect for the next of kin the identity of the deceased is not being released.”
NOTL fire chief Nick Ruller was among the first responders.
“We were called out a little past noon,” Ruller said in an interview.
“Once I arrived on scene, we didn’t have a great vantage point because it’s a pretty sharp drop at that location, so I actually went up onto the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge and was able to get a visual at that point of a vehicle that was several hundred feet below.”
He said the vehicle was resting against a cable boulder fence that is there to protect the service road for the Sir Adam Beck I power station.
Firefighters then accessed the service road and were able to get to the scene through the Adam Beck power station, using the elevators, he said.
The high angle team also assisted Niagara Parks Police in searching the area “in the event there were any other potential victims that could have been ejected from the vehicle,” Ruller said.
“That search proved to be negative, so there was no one else involved.”
Police said the investigation is ongoing and anyone who may have witnessed the incident or was in the area at the time is asked to call 905-688-4111, extension 2200.
